Chapter Fourteen
Monday
Two hours after kissing Hollis goodbye, I’m sitting at a locked gate with two men standing on the other side. The skinny younger man steps up and I immediately spot the nine millimeter hanging from a shoulder strap under his cut.
“What’s your business?” He stands with his feet shoulder width apart, and his completely tattooed arms crossed over his chest.
I cut the engine of my bike, holding my hands up, then I pull open my own cut, showing him the two Sigs I’m carrying. “Here to see Cruz. He’s expecting me.”
“You got a name, shithead?” The older of the two, both of them still younger than me, has now joined his friend and has his hand resting on his piece.
“Roman Jefferys.” Recognition hits him and he opens the gate for me.
He nods to me as I restart my bike and pull through the fence into an impressive compound. A huge two-story brick building with a massive Hells Bastard sign hanging on it sits in the middle of a large courtyard, and is surrounded by several tiny houses. There are a few motorcycles backed in against the building, and it has all the signs of being the clubhouse. I pull beside them and cut my engine. Resting back, I stretch out the kinks and laugh. A two hour ride and I’m knotting up like an old fucking man. I’ve got to ride more.
“Hey, man.” The older man from the gate comes over to me. He has no identifying patches on the front of his cut but prospect. “Cruz is this way.” I dismount my bike and follow him into the building. It takes a minute for my eyes to adjust to the darkness inside. There are two men sitting at a bar. “Cruz.” They turn to us, looking pissed until they see me.
Cruz and Mose both stand with beers in hand. “Get your ass back outside, prospect,” Mose barks, and the man at my side disappears back out the big door. “Hey.” I take his hand in a firm handshake. “How was the ride?”
“Rough,” I tell him with a laugh.
“Getting soft, you fucking pencil pusher?” he jabs back.
“Fuck you,” I say as Cruz pushes a laughing Mose out of the way.
“Dipshit.” He shakes his head. “Hey, man.” I shake his hand and we make our way back to the bar. “Glad to see you left the official shit at home.” He looks at my cut. My boys and I have lived the life of a club on the surface, but Cruz and the Bastards are the real deal, outlaw one percenters. We’ve applied for charter status using the Bastards as a support club.
“You still got eyes on you?” After dealing with us, word had gotten around and now the Bastards were lying low until the rumors blew over.
“A couple,” he answers, not looking the least bit worried about them.
“Official or something else?” I take the beer Mose hands me, nodding my thanks.
He scoffs. “The official ones don’t worry me.”
“Heard from Oz?”
“No, and I think it might be a while before we do.”
“I’ll try to keep you in the loop as much as I can.”
“Appreciate it.” He smacks his hands together. “Now, to get to why you’re here.” He finishes his beer. “You feel like riding, Mose?” Mose rubs the back of his neck, looking like he had a night similar to Hollis’s.
“Why not? Maybe my room will be empty when I get back. The double mint twins are still passed out.” He looks at me and smiles. “You remember those days, don’t you, Roman?” he asks as he slaps me in the chest.
“I do, but I don’t miss them one bit.” I toss my beer in the can at the end of the bar. The similarities in our club houses isn’t lost on me, except the rooms are upstairs, unlike in our clubhouse. We make our way back out to our bikes. “Where are we heading?” I throw my leg over my bike and fasten my helmet.
“To see my Aunt Sarah.” He kicks his bike to life, then pulls out with me and Mose right behind him.
~~~~~~
The antiseptic smell hits my nose, turning my stomach. I’ve never been a fan of hospitals, much less nursing homes. It’s where the elderly, in my opinion, come to waste away and die.
Cruz stops at a desk and is pointed in the direction of an open sunroom filled with elderly residents. In the back, there’s a woman sitting at a table. She has her body turned so that she’s looking out the window and Cruz heads us in her direction.
When we reach her, he reaches out and gently touches her shoulder. She slowly turns with a wide smile on her face. “Ethan, honey.” She holds her arms out and Cruz leans in, giving her a kiss on the cheek and a hug.
I kick his boot once he stands. “Your real name is Ethan?” Mose and I both stifle a laugh as he moves around to greet Sarah.
“Do you wanna give me shit about my name, or would you like to find out about Hollis?”
“Hollis, that’s a name I’ve not heard in years.” She reaches for my hand. “How do you know that name?”
I lower myself to a knee so that I’m face-to-face with Sarah. “She’s my fiancée, ma’am.”
Her gray eyes are sharp, and a smile lights up her withered face. Letting go of my hand, she pats the table. “Why don’t you boys have a seat?” She adjusts her wheelchair back under the table. “First, you have to understand that back then, times weren’t good. I was married to a useless drunk.” She turns to Cruz. “Your uncle was just as mean as your father, Ethan.” He nods.
“They were assholes,” Mose adds from behind me.
“Shane.” Sarah says his name with a familiarity only a mother figure uses.
“Ah, fuck this, I’m gonna go get something to drink.” He turns and stalks off in the direction we’d came from.
She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “He has a temper just like his father did, and never does well when he has to come here.”
Cruz leans over, and in a hushed tone says, “We’re first cousins, our fathers were brothers. Mose is from one town over, and came to live with us when his father, my other uncle, beat his mother almost to death when he was twelve.”
“Ethan’s mother ran off, leaving this beautiful boy in the hands of that monster. I was never able to have any children of my own, so I was more than happy to take them in. I did the best I could raising two boys, but back then, nurses didn’t make quite what they make now, and when every dime you manage to scrape together is being blown at the local bar, you do what you can.”
I sit in silence, trying to figure out how Hollis and her mother fit into all this. “Forgive me, but how does this have anything to do with Hollis?” She tilts her head at me in question. “Roman, ma’am.” I offer her my hand and she takes it in both of her delicate frail ones.
“Patience, son, we’ll get there.” Mose sets down a tray of coffee on the table between us, and then a lemonade in front of Sarah before leaning down to give her a kiss. I see his lips move at her ear, but he speaks so softly, I can’t hear the words. But whatever he says to her makes her smile.
Cruz hands a coffee to me. “You’re going to need this. Too bad it’s not Irish.” He shrugs his shoulders.
“Thanks, man.” I hold up my hand when he offers the small packet of sugar to me. “Drink it black.”
“Anyway, I had two young boys, two drunks, and a pocket full of bills.” She looks back out the window. “I can tell you this now because he has nothing I need, and I have nothing he can take away from me.” Her statement makes me stop with the cup halfway to my mouth. “She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever laid eyes on, and like most men, he couldn’t resist her. But, unfortunately for him, she was looking for more than just a quick roll in the hay, and he wasn’t prepared to give her anything more. He already had what she wanted.” She wrings her hands as she tells us about how Hollis’s mother fell in love with a man who already had a family. Everything she’s saying is hitting so close to home, it feels like she’s telling my story.
A man of power, money, family, big house and political aspirations. Sound familiar? It’s like a fucking carbon copy.
“One night I was working the late shift when a man in a three-piece suit paid me a visit. I knew who he was, even though we lived on very different sides of town. He knew who I was too, so he came to me with an offer a woman like me couldn’t refuse.” She looks at me, her eyes glassy with regret. “So I did what I was paid to do. When she went into labor, I made the child disappear.” She pauses, wiping her nose and her cheeks. Cruz offers her a box of tissues. “Thank you, sweetheart.” I give her time to collect herself. “I’m sorry, but in the moment, all I could think about were my two boys and what that money could provide for them.”
Cruz reaches for her hand. “Nobody blames you, Aunt Sarah.” He looks to me and waits for me to back up his statement with my reassurance.
The more she talks, the more hate builds up in me. He preyed on women, one way or another. Using his money to buy silence and hide a child. Not giving two shits for a woman he took to his bed and put a child in, disregarding the law in the process.
“Money still shows up in my account. I’ve tried changing it, changing banks, but he always finds me and is continuing to buy my silence. But I can’t live with it anymore. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of that beautiful little girl and her mother, and how my actions have effected them.”
“I’m not going to lie, she had a rough go at it and fell in with the wrong people for a while. But she’s good now, she’s with me.” What else can I say? The woman deserves more than me blowing smoke up her ass to appease her conscience.
“And her mother?”
I scoff, sitting back in my chair. “She moved Hollis around for a while, and when she was six or seven, they moved to my hometown, apparently bringing her bad habits with her.” Sarah gasps and covers her mouth with her hand. “Unfortunately, that story didn’t have a happy ending either, but this time she took my mother and father down with her.”
“Oh, Roman,” she mumbles around the hand still covering her mouth.
“This isn’t on you, not any of us. It rests solely on the shoulders of two people and one’s already dead. Is he still around?” This time I reach across the table, stopping my hand short of touching hers, hoping to convey my sincerity.
“Hell yeah he is,” Mose says, cracking his knuckles. “Are we gonna teach the douchebag asshole a lesson?”
“Yes.” I stand and push my chair back under the table.
“Thank God. I’ve been needing to kick some ass for a while. This sleepy little town is boring me to tears.” Mose slaps his hands together.
I stop in front of him. “Not that way. These kinds of men only respond to one thing.”
Still cracking his knuckles, he asks, “Oh, really? Who doesn’t respond to an ass kicking?”
Cruz stands. “Someone who can have your ass thrown in jail and the key lost before you even wash the blood off your knuckles.”
“He’s the kind of man who only responds to someone threatening his money and status. Public perception is everything to a man like him, and that’s where you hit him,” I tell Mose, already forming a plan.
I drop to my haunches beside Sarah, taking her trembling hands in mine. “There’ll be no blowback on you for this, and I promise he will never bother or threaten you again. You have my word. Thank you for taking care of her.”
She takes one of her hands free from mine and smooths it down the side of my face. “He will come for me, Roman. Make no mistake about that. He’s a very powerful man.”
I lean in, narrowing my eyes at her. “Have you met me?” She looks at me, confused. “Hello, Ms. Sarah Lloyd, my name is Roman Isaac Jefferys.”
~~~~~~
We walk outside to our bikes. “So what’s the plan since you won’t let me beat the shit out of his bloated ass?” Mose asks as he lights the smoke he’s pinching between his lips.
“Where would he be right now?” I shake off the offer of the smoke from him.
“Oh, right now, he’s stuffing his face at the country club,” Cruz says around his smoke.
Mose chuckles. “If his fat ass isn’t sitting in some alley getting a blowjob.”
I head for my bike, but Cruz grabs me. “Hey, man, listen. How this is handled could affect more than just you and Hollis. If at all possible, let’s keep this shit contained to just us few here?” He looks back to Mose, who has a shit-eating grin on his face. “I’ll explain later. So what are you gonna do?”
I know that look in his eyes. “Does it have to do with a woman?”
“Of course it has to do with a pussy. Why else would you be here?” Mose yells from behind Cruz.
“Oh shit, man, her name is Harper,” Cruz looks away from me, kicking at a rock with his boot.
“I can’t make any promises.” He jerks his head up to glare at me. “Sorry, I’ve got to do what’s best for Hollis.”
“Harper has nothing to do with this. She’s an innocent, but how this plays out could hurt her way more than she has been already.” The sincerity in his eyes is often reflected in mine.
Knowing I owe him a huge favor, saving this girl who’s evidently very important to him from blowback of my situation is something I’ll try my best to do. I lay my hand on his shoulder in reassurance. “I’ll do what I can, you have my word.” He nods, acknowledging my promise.